1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to image processing device and method, a printing system, a halftone process determination method, and a program, and more particularly, to an image processing technology that generates a printing halftone image from a continuous-tone image.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a printing system in which a printing device such as an ink jet printing device or an offset printing device forms an image, a halftone process is performed on data of a continuous-tone image expressed by multiple gradations, and thus, data of a halftone image corresponding to an image output mode of the printing device is generated. The data of the halftone image is used as printing dot image data indicating a dot pattern in which dot arrangement of halftone dots reproduced by the printing device or a size of each dot is defined. The printing device forms an image based on the data of the halftone image.
As the method of the halftone process, there are various methods such as a dither method, an error diffusion method, and a direct binary search (DBS) method. For example, in the dither method, multi-value data of the continuous-tone image is converted into binary dot data by comparing a threshold and a pixel value of a processing target pixel using a threshold matrix called a dither mask, assigning dot-ON pixels in a case where the pixel value is equal to or greater than the threshold and assigning dot-OFF pixels in a case where the pixel value is less than the threshold.
JP2012-222433A describes a printing system capable of selecting a halftone process appropriate for a printed material in consideration of productivity of the printed material. The printing system described in JP2012-222433A may select one signal processing condition from signal processing conditions of a plurality of halftone processes having different dot distribution characteristics, and may perform the halftone process using the selected signal processing condition.